A very sluggish PC, reformated cleaned up and still a snail

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hello, what's up again. Found the problem to windows/system32/sytem config. If you play some games like Never Winter Nights, Spysweeper removes this from windows, when boot up it crashes your PC, It can take 20 boots or one. It took me 4 months to figure this out. Leave it off when installing.
But here is my small prob. I cleaned my pc, I partitioned my one hard Drive, the other left intacked. I cleaned it up pretty good. Before hand I had this major boot delay on the windows logo. It takes about 2 minutes. It uses to take 10 seconds. My First motherboard failed, and had it replaced by Manufac. Booted up fast, 10 secs. Back to slow boot again. Then I noticed my video display on games choppy. I have an Okay video card. Downloaded the latest video drivers. Pc now overall very slow. I Really feel positive it is the motherboard configuration, because what I spoke about above NWN crash might have something to do with the BIOS, because I had to use the other hardrive, install windows on it to get it to boot, got what I needed off the crashed windows HD and started all over again. PC I think was sluggish after this . I did notice this everyone, on my MOBO the serial ata boots from the secondary slot. I had to swap the serial cables to get it to boot. I really wish I new more about configing the Bios. I built this PC with a friend that works the PC systems for our county so I know it isn't a hardware problem. (I hope) but I like comming here anyway to listen to you guys. More enjoying :)
PC AMD 64 +3500 2.2
MSI K8T Neo2
Seagate 7200.7 80GB (holds windows and My work and My wifes work
Seagate 7200.7 200GB (Partitioned-Games-Movies-Pics-)
Crucial 1 GIG ram, double faced
MSI NX6800GT 256mb VGA
Plextor px-712sa serial ata DVD/CD-R
PCI Card Adaptec serial ATA adaptor (for the DVD BURNER)
550W camelion aspire PS
 
I'd advise running a scan for viruses (using some anti-virus program), then one for spyware/malware (using Ad-aware and/or Spybot).

Such slowdowns could also be caused by extreme fragmentation of the data on the hard drive (95%+, which is nearly impossible for a casual user) or the drives not running in UDMA mode (ATA33/66/100/133/150....), but in PIO mode. Check the DMA settings in Windows and in the BIOS.
In Windows it's at: Start - Settings - Control panel - System - Hardware - Device manager - IDE/ATAPI controllers - Right click on Primary/Secondary channel - Properties - Special settings
 
I looked and the mode is running in PIO, and it says that it if DMA is available to run it. I can't switch it. I scrolled down and it only says PIO Only. DMA if Available. I really don't know How to check BIOS, I think it is Hitting F1 if that's what you me, I will try that. But it doesn't look like I can change to DMA. I also Have windows XP. I want to really try having the PC boot from the other hardrive and switch them on the board. I will also tyr this. Get it back to old config. Thanks, I will let you know in a bit. I alsd know this, I have been updating the windows and ever since service pack 2 I feel this is when it happened. But it still boots slow.
and I ran spy sweep. I will scan for viruses.
 
We've found the problem!
It should be running in DMA mode, but it's set to PIO at the BIOS at the moment.

Press the delete key when starting the computer to enter the BIOS menu. Look for hard drive settings, or IDE settings and change them from PIO to DMA (preferably ATA66, or ATA 100 or something faster). The manual of your mainboard will help you if you get lost in the BIOS menu.
 
hello, I am going for it. I looked at my vga settings in the bios, and it was at 128 and I changed it to 256, I hope that works and it is ok. I unistalled the corecell. I feel I don't need my machine overcloked, and it is also constantly taking it on it's own to over clock. I set it at 200, save and it jumps it up, and sometimes it falls below, it acts very unstable, sometime the fan blows super fast, 5100 or so. disable done with it. I sniffed around the DMA but it is giving me a hard time. I am going to try to set it to that. It shows that it is set to ecp. it's set to auto and it should come up DMA and it won't do it. I will try again, and I will let you know what happens. Thanks
 
went in and tried to change the transfer rate. All of the settings are set for DMA auto detect. I could not find ata66, etc. I do have serial ata prots set up. wondering if that has something to do with it. But I went in through windows
Primary IDE channel
Device 0
Device Type- grayed out on auto detection
Transfer mode- DMA if available
Current Transfer - PIO
Device 1
Device Type-Auto detection
Transper Mode- DMA if Avaiable
Current transfer rate- Not applicable
Primary IDE Channel
Device 0
Device Type- Not grayed out auto detection
Transfer Mode -DMA if available
Current Transfer -Not applicable
Device 0
Device Type- Not grayed out auto detection
Transfer Mode -DMA if available
Current Transfer -Not applicable
Secondary IDE Channnel
Device 0
Device Type- grayed out on auto detection
Transfer mode- DMA if available
Current Transfer - PIO
Device 1
Device Type-Auto detection
Transper Mode- DMA if Avaiable
Current transfer rate- Not applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
Device 0
Device Type- Not grayed out auto detection
Transfer Mode -DMA if available
Current Transfer -Not applicable
Device 0
Device Type- Not grayed out auto detection
Transfer Mode -DMA if available
Current Transfer -Multi-word DMA mode 2

If this helps, I can't seem to change to DMA, but the device in secondary is in DMA
thanks
 
Weird, the current transfer mode is still PIO. At least we've found out what the problem is, solving it is only a step away.
This is the official statement of Microsoft on the issue. I don't have any other ideas at the moment, the BIOS settings are at auto-detect, but Windows still refuses to run the drives in DMA mode...
It's probably a stupid question, but did you install the motherboard's drivers? Were there any IDE drivers on the motherboard's install disc?
 
The problem is pretty easy to solve, but hard to get around if you didn't face it before, it also happened to me.

Try doing the following:

1. Remove the first IDE channel from device manager(uninstall it)

2. Restart the computer

3. If it still doesn't work in DMA mode after windows detects and reinstalls the IDE channel, try to change the IDE cable

4. If it still doesn't work, GOK!
 
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